MEXICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE PROPOSING AGENCY WITH BORDER FOCUS

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Downtown San Diego 
The candidate favored to win Mexico’s July 1 presidential election wants to establish a federal agency to address border issues, one of his representatives said Wednesday in San Diego.

“There’s a huge disconnect between border towns and Mexico City,” Arnulfo Valdivia Machuca, a spokesman for Enrique Peña Nieto’s campaign, said during a debate organized by the Mexico Business Center of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

The event, held at the downtown Westgate Hotel, brought together representatives of the three major presidential candidates: Peña Nieto of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Josefina Vázquez Mota of the National Action Party (PAN) and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

Peña Nieto has maintained a strong lead over his two main rivals. His victory would mean a return to power for the PRI, which ruled Mexico for seven decades until its defeat in 2000 by the PAN’s Vicente Fox.

“There is a very important presidential election that’s going to have important implications for the United States and San Diego,” said Ruben Barrales, the chamber’s president and moderator of the debate.

The speakers addressed a wide range of issues, including energy reform, the economy, corruption, infrastructure and Mexico’s efforts against drug-trafficking organizations.

Vázquez Mota is proposing a “special border office” that would report directly to the president to focus on issues such as security and economic integration along Mexico’s northern border, said Gastón Luken Garza, a federal congressman from Baja California who was representing the candidate.

The first representative for the northern border was Ernesto Ruffo Appel, appointed in 2000 by then-President Fox. Ruffo resigned after less than three years, citing health reasons and a lack of understanding from his colleagues in Mexico City.

His replacement resigned after eight months on the job, saying the Fox administration showed little interest.